The inaugural storytelling theme was “the law” and I got on board both because I’ve been I’ve been buried for a long time in solitary writing and because the topic hit a nerve. The extent to which modern conservative governments are flagrantly breaking the law really upsets me.

I originally wanted to do a bunch of short stories about the scandals that are linked to up above, but time got the better of me. I only managed to bang out one before the June 26th reading.

The event was, I think, a big success. There was some comedy, some drama and some dramedy.

I thought it’d be fun to post up the story that I read that night along with a song that I think works well with the theme.

Hope you like it…

Six Four Two One Short Stories About The Law

Once upon a time a young woman fell in love. The woman’s name was America and she was smart and beautiful and practically virginal. She graduated near the top of her high school class and went away to college to study biology.

America had an easy lyrical laugh and a sprinkling of adorable freckles. Her hair was long and healthy and as golden as the sun-drenched wheat belt that stretched from Siskiyou County in the north all the way to Imperial County in the south in her home state of California.

On the first day of her undergraduate Molecular Embryology class, America met a young man named Vigor. Vigor was smart and strong and practically virginal. Vigor was a high school track-and-field champ and had gone away to college to study agriculture. Vigor was tall and broad shouldered. He had kind eyes. His hair was thick and neat and as dark as the seam of ebony marble that wound through the Cascade Mountain Range in his home state of California.

Vigor and America became lab partners, then study partners, then tennis partners. Eventually Vigor asked America if she would become his life partner as well.

Despite the fact that America and Vigor were raised in large tight-knit families, they were determined that their wedding would not be a slavish imitation of ancestral traditions. The ceremony would, above all else, be a true reflection of their green and matchless love. So even though America had been raised Roman Catholic and although Vigor had grown up Southern Baptist, in the spirit of ecumenical harmony the young couple decided that their marriage would take place on the neutral ground of the Kern County Courthouse in Bakersfield, California.

America and Vigor had arranged for their solemnizing ceremony to take place on Friday the 27th of June 2008. It would be the perfect day for a summer wedding, they thought. The spring planting and first cycle of weeding would be long-completed and school would be out for the tow-headed army of nieces and nephews who’d be pouring in from all over the state. If Vigor’s well-thumbed almanac was right, they would exchange their vows on a warm and cloudless day with temperatures dropping low enough in the evening to allow for the use of fashionable wraps and dinner jackets.

When there were only two weeks remaining before the big day, America allowed herself to enjoy a brief moment of self-congratulatory calm. She’d inherited her meticulous nature from her mother and had dutifully dug to the bottom of a highly detailed to do list. There was only one last item to attend to.

America popped open her laptop and surfed over to the Kern County Courthouse Web site. A few additional out of town guests had asked to attend the ceremony and she wanted to make sure that they wouldn’t tip the scales on the wedding hall’s fire regulations.

America was floored by what she found online.

The note was written on the Kern County Clerk’s Web page under the heading, “Marriage Licenses”. America read through it several times until tears of frustration and anger welled up in the corners of her clear blue eyes.

The note said:

The County Clerk’s office will not solemnize weddings after June 13, 2008. We will not have the staff or space to deal with an increase in both licenses and ceremonies. Because of long-term administrative plans, budgetary reasons, and the need to increase security for elections, the Clerk’s office will cease solemnizing weddings, which is discretionary on the part of the County Clerk. As done in other counties, information necessary to solemnize marriages will be made available to those acquiring licenses.

America was shocked. How could this be possible? She’d planned for every contingency. The tents were ordered, the caterers were booked. The Byzantine seating arrangement had been hammered down for over a month. And now, suddenly, the county clerk wouldn’t be performing marriages anymore?

The young woman turned her attention back to the Internet, conducted a flurry of probing research and then picked up the phone. She dialed the Kern County Clerk, a woman named Ann Barnett.

“Hello Ann,” America said as cheerfully as she could manage, “It’s America.”

America listened patiently as the older woman spoke.

“Yes, I see,” America said, “And that’s exactly what’s up on the Web site, but I have a few questions. I mean you say that you don’t have the staff or space to deal with the ceremonies but…”

She took a deep breath and charged ahead.

“I did some research and learned that you and your predecessors typically perform over 40% of Kern County marriages. And I know for a fact that the Kern County Courthouse has two huge rooms dedicated specifically for marriages because as you’re no doubt aware, I had one booked.

“Yes Ann, yes…”

America listened again.

“Yes, but Ann, as to the financial argument, as I’m sure you know the president of the California Association of Clerks and Election officials was recently quoted by Reuters saying that contrary to your claim, marriage ceremonies actually make money. In fact, according to the Bakersfield Califonian newspaper, Kern County civil ceremonies pull in an average of $50,000 a year. And as for staffing, those ceremonies take, on average, seven minutes to perform by staff who are paid less than $20 an hour.”

America listened to one final burst from the County Clerk. She sighed.

“To be honest Ann, the security issue seems like the weakest argument of all,” she said. “If it wasn’t a problem for the past two decades, why would it suddenly become one now?”

“Look Ann,” America said, “Let’s level with each other. Woman to woman.”

She chose an even tone and spoke clearly and calmly into the receiver.

“Ann are you sure that your decision doesn’t have anything to do with the fact that California’s Supreme Court struck down the state’s ban on same-sex marriage on May 15th in a broadly worded decision that would invalidate any law that discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation that comes into effect two days from now on June 15th?

“And isn’t it true that you requested that the County Counsel file a brief with the California Supreme Court opposing implementation of the May 15th ruling allowing gay marriage and that you subsequently made the decision to shut down all marriages when that same counsel advised that it would be illegal for you to only marry couples of your own choosing?

“And don’t you find it bit too ironic, Ann, that each of the five Californian counties who have decided to stop performing any marriages in the face of this decision have all voted staunchly Republican for over 40 years? I mean I know Republicans have said that gay marriage would ruin traditional marriage but I’m not sure this is what they had–”

But she didn’t get to finish her sentence. The line went dead.

Ann Barnett had hung up on America.

(Click to play song…)

. . .

Here’s my little coda: if history has taught us anything it’s that people who line up against equality and love have been proven to be on the wrong side of the issue again and again and again.

As of right now, five four Republican-leaning counties in California have stopped solemnizing any marriages, gay or straight, fulfilling that age-old conservative adage, “If you can have it, no-one can.”

The counties are:

Merced County – strongly Republican (reversed its decision under intense pressure)
Claveras County – Republican since 1964
Kern County – Republican since 1964
Butte County – Republican since 1964
Kings County – Republican since 1964

You can contact the Kern County Clerk at the following co-ordinates:

Ann K. Barnett
1115 Truxtun Avenue
Bakersfield, CA 93301-4639
Regular Office Hours 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM Mon-Fri
Open To The Public 8:30 AM - 4:00 PM Mon-Fri
(661) 868-3588

To make a long story short, Jeanne and I and a producer friend sat down a couple of years ago and banged out a detailed 50-page treatment for a PG horror film aimed at tweens. (Note to aspiring filmmakers: leave producers out of the equation until you have a script-in-hand.) I then went away and wrote the full script.

Jeanne and I allowed things to proceed, trusting that our contributions and interests would be respected without much more than a loosely drafted written-by-us agreement. (This was, obviously, also a mistake.)

Anyhow after several months, meetings and rounds with entertainment lawyers, we finally have a signed agreement and cash in hand! I’m not sure if the film will ever get made and what state it will be in if/when it finally does hit the screens, but it’s good to know that this chapter of our lives is finally closed.

When I graduated with a computer engineering degree from the Royal Military University in 1996 I knew a few things: the Canadian military was stuck in a massive rut and I wanted to go somewhere to combine my green writing and technology skills.

My first step down the writing/tech path was to become the Junior Technical Writer at Tundra Semiconductor Corporation. The dot-com boom was on and considering the mundaneness of the things we got into from day-to-day, they were fairly exciting times. I was young, flush with cash, given stock options and an expense account. The experience financed my move to Montreal and the purchase of the duplex that I’m happily ensconced in at this very moment.

One of my first jobs at Tundra was to touch up the 8000 Series manual right before they decided to discontinue that product line forever. Part of that job entailed drawing up a couple of schematics. As a non-artist, non-Adobe Illustrator guy, I remember being particularly proud when I finally figured out how to make the correct curves on a tricky little 28-pin SOIC package. (And no, I no longer have any idea what an SOIC package is…)

Hopefully the success of my second book will surpass that of my first…

For all of its life so far the book that I’ve been writing has only existed in my head and on the computer screen. No one else (including my best buddy life-partner) has seen or read a word of it… Until now. [Cue the dramatic music.]

Late last night after piloting our new electric scooter through the mean streets of Montreal, Jeanne and I laid eyes on the first-ever printed pages of The Virus Makers.

I finished the first draft of this Young Adult novel at the end of March and my soccer-loving, boy-fathering, cousin-in-law Peter Coles kindly offered to print it up for me. Pete’s the VP of Sales and Marketing at Arcprint (and imaging) and it seemed appropriate that the book be birthed back in Vancouver where I first started writing it in the spring of 2006.

I’ll speak more about the book in, I’m sure, way too many subsequent posts, but for now I just want to fête the newly corporeal block of text that is the first draft of The Virus Makers!

Betty Boop started out her cartoon life as a dog-like creation of Max Fleischer (an animation legend who helped bring Popeye, Superman and Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer to life).

Boop first appeared in the early 1930s sporting a decidedly 1920s style — it was all about the saucy little flapper dress, jazz beats and wry winks to sexily intoxicated good times. Eventually she was toned down (yet another black mark on the morality police) and her popularity waned.

One thing that makes Betty Boop’s earlier cartoons so great was that, unlike other movie-makers at the time, Max Fleischer wasn’t afraid to work with black musicians.

Check out the incredible1933 Betty Boop cartoon Snow White below (not to be confused with the Disney version that came out four years later: You can read Time’s 1937 review of that movie here).

Fleischer’s inspired version of Snow White features an incredible section with Koko the Clown dancing in a skeletal underworld. Koko was voiced by none other than Cab Calloway doing an amazing version of St. James Infirmary Blues…

(This film was chosen for preservation by the U.S. Library of Congress in the National Film Registry in 1994.)

Over the next little while I’ll be modifying the look-and-feel of the site as well as its focus. The site (now simply jwhiting at jwhiting.com) will serve as my professional face-to-the world.

Although I’m not entirely comfortable with the idea, in order to advance a big-ish project that’s coming down the pipe I have to get into the business of self-promotion. Expect some more talk about my writing and what I’m up to and less about my gift wishes and what I’m laughing at. Also expect the site to look a bit wonky and going up and down before everything gets back on track.

Thanks.

Jason

When I first moved to Montreal as a not-so-mature student about ten years ago, I subscribed to The Gazette because the student rate was so low. Since then I re-subscribe whenever I get a call from the Gazette’s deep-discount promo people. (Right now I’m paying about $5/month for my Gazette subscription; reg. rate is, I believe, $22/month. The Gazette is worth $5/month. It’s not worth $22.)

Anyhow, even though I’m on a super-low subscription rate (that’s set to expire tomorrow actually), I still maintain a bitchy atitude when it comes to the paper’s content. Yes this is petty and small, but that is sometimes my way. We know this. We sigh, shake our heads and move on.

Even though I hate that the Gazette is only now rushing to catch up to the climate crisis problem (without touching its daily “Driving” section cash-cow, of course) and even though I find their columnists to be, for the most part, old and out-of-touch, the section that usually causes me the most grief is the Books section.

I think it’s because I like books so much. The Books section should be a source of joy and wonder. A chance to discover a new treasure. I love to tuck into the New York Times’ book review. The Gazette’s effort, however, always leaves me cold. I find that there’s rarely anything of interest in there to anyone who was born between the 1950s and the 1990s.

So, on Monday, in the spirit of one activist action a day, I decided to do what any fine subscriber should do: Even though I’m only paying pennies a day, I demanded a better books section. Here’s my back and forth with the Gazette’s Books editor:

Date: Mon, 28 Jan 2008 09:55:10 -0800 (PST)
From: “Jason Whiting”
Subject: Books for 20-40s.
To: MShenker@thegazette.canwest.com, ESadler@thegazette.canwest.com

Hi Gazette Editors,

When you’re assembling and assigning the Gazette’s books section can you please remember that there is a big section of readers between the ages of 20 and 40? These days it seems like it’s all kids books and historical/World War II fare. I didn’t feel compelled to read a single review this past week.

Thanks.

Jason

I received a reply (formatting untouched):

Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 11:27:53 -0500
Subject: Book section
From: “Austin, Edie (Montreal Gazette)”
To: jasonrwhiting@yahoo.ca

Dear Mr. Whiting,

Many thanks for having taken the time to write.

Am sorry you did not find anything interesting in last week’s Books
section.
I do try to vary the content to cover a variety of tastes and
interests.

In your opinion, what type of books is the 20-40 age group interested
in?

Granted, the section you refer to had a cover review on retirement
planning
(never too soon to start, by the way…), and there were several
historical
novels and memoirs. However, not being so far past 40 myself, I do
think
that there were a lot of things in the section that would have been of
interest to many people in the 20 to 40 age group (including at least
some
of the historical material), even if they did not happen to be of any
interest to you. For example, The Painter of Battles, by Arturo
Pérez-Reverte (reviewed on page 4) is a novel about a war photographer
that
raises some important, perennial human issues (and the war in question
is
not even WW2, but the Bosnian conflict of the 1990s). (As for the
children’s
book coverage, it is targeted at parents more than children, and a lot
of
people in the 20 to 40 age group are parents.)

In any case, I hope you will find this coming Saturday’s section more
interesting. In it, we will be featuring some graphic novels/memoirs.

Please let me know what you would like to see more of in the section. I
would appreciate your viewpoint on this.

Sincerely,
Edie Austin
Books editor

I replied:

Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 10:09:09 -0800 (PST)
From: “Jason Whiting” View Contact Details View Contact Details
Subject: Re: Book section
To: “Austin, Edie (Montreal Gazette)”
Hello Edie,

Thanks for getting back to me.

The biggest blind spots in the Gazette’s Books section are, as I see it, books about scifi, horror, and graphic novels (memoirs not so much). I’m also missing books about technology, including the technology of books. (I haven’t, for example, seen any discussion on Amazon’s Kindle. Why is that? Why so silent about Google’s putting the full-text of books like Fast Food Nation online?)

Why no review of Man Gone Down, or The Savage Detectives?

(And while we’re on the subject, what is the rambly, predictable mainstream-defender Dr. Schwartz column doing in the Books section? )

To me, the entire books section seems to be pitched to the baby-boomer crowd. I’m glad to hear that its not meant to be, and look forward to the time when I can dig into more reviews that are of interest to me.

Thanks again for taking the time to respond to my first letter and for soliciting my opinions.

Best,

Jason Whiting

Soon after sending the above, I received this reply:

Date: Tue, 29 Jan 2008 14:00:59 -0500
Subject: Re: Book section
From: “Austin, Edie (Montreal Gazette)”
To: “Jason Whiting”
Thanks for your reply, will reply to your new email when I have a chance, but in the meantime, have to update something I wrote in my previous emai. My package on graphic novels/memoirs has just been bumped temporarily by something else that has just had its pub date changed, however I expect to get the graphic stuff in the following week.
Am now scrambling to deal with this development…
Edie

Since my subscription runs out tomorrow, I guess I’ll have to head over to MultiMags on Saturday to if there’s anything interesting hits the Gazette’s Books section this week… And thanks to you for listening to my crazy ramblings.

Check out Exibit A below…

And then we waited.

Today the CBC spoke. And there’s good news and bad news.

The bad news is that the unscripted realness of the concept sort of frightens them. (Frankly it frightened us a bit too.) Overall, although they liked the way the demo sounded, the process of putting it all together was too unpredictable and time consuming for them and it would be too expensive to produce the show if we actually started getting paid for each hour of work. (If I sat down to figure out what our hourly wage for the demo was, I’d be surprised if we cracked into loonie territory.)

The good news is that they like us. Tom Anniko still wants us to do something for the CBC and Frank Opolko wants to keep working with us. So its back to the drawing board, but this time it’s gonna be scripted. Which is definitely fine with me. It’s (supposedly) what I do best.

We’ve already begun on the concept, but its too early for details. Watch this space for updates and thanks for listening.

There are a couple of TV and film writers out there that maintain great blogs, but the best one that deals specifically with the Canadian television business is Dead Things On Sticks.

It was over on Denis McGrath’s blog that I first heard about the Banff Television Festival’s Global Television Writers Apprentice Award. From the Banff site:

The Writers Apprentice offers an emerging Canadian writer with the unprecedented opportunity to gain significant experience by completing a four-week internship in the story department of a prime-time series.

Sounds great right? I thought so and applied for the internship on the 20th. As part of the application, I submitted an original one page(ish) scene from one of my favourite TV shows.

Read my super-brief Battlestar Galactica spec script below the fold…

(Please excuse the formatting…)

BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (SPEC) “Marathon Man” 04/18/07 p.9

INT. CYLON SPACE PARK CRUISER – CONTINUOUS

Starbuck leads a squad of Colonial Marines through the empty and eerily echoing ship. She pokes her head quickly around a bulkhead, staring intently down an impossibly long hallway.

STARBUCK
(speaking over comm)
Galactica, Starbuck: All clear on this level too. No toasters, no skinjobs, no nothing. This whole gods damned ship is deserted…

LEE ADAMA (O.S.)
(over comm)
Starbuck, Galactica: Slow and steady wins the race soldier. The Cylons went through a lot to hide this ship from us and we need to know why. Keep it top to bottom, inch-by-inch.

STARBUCK
(to Marines and over comm)
You heard the CAG boys, “Top to bottom, inch-by-inch”. Just like on his wedding night.

The Colonial Marines murmur in amusement as the search party moves down the hallway, weapons at the ready. On either side of the squad, jail-cell type walls open into small empty rooms. Starbuck drags her weapon absently across the bars.

STARBUCK
(over comm)
This section is some sort of detention wing. Bunch of little holding cells that are empty, empty, empt—

Starbuck abruptly comes face to face with a tall black man standing in the middle of his locked cell. The man’s hair and beard have grown out long and wild. He looks barely alive. The Colonial Marines bristle into position.

MARATHON MAN
Thank the gods.

The Colonial Marines wait for instruction. Starbuck is off-balance. She recognizes the prisoner.

MARATHON MAN (CON’T)
It has been so long. I had almost completely given up hope.

Starbuck slowly regains her composure. She seethes with a barely contained fury.

STARBUCK
Lucky you. Now you can throw that hope out of an airlock.

The Marathon Man looks confused.

STARBUCK (CON’T)
(over comm)
Galactica, Starbuck: Contact. We’ve got a Cylon down here. Simon model. Looks like they’ve put him in hack for some reason.
(to Marathon Man, taunting)
What’d you do skinjob? Plug yourself into the wrong toaster?

LEE ADAMA (O.S.)
(over comm)
Starbuck, Galactica: Acknowledged. Good work. Reel it in for questioning.

STARBUCK
(to Marathon Man)
You frak up an oil change or something you naughty little Cylon?

MARATHON MAN
I’m not a Cylon.

STARBUCK
Nice try chrome bone.

Starbuck motions to the Marines to continue their sweep.

STARBUCK (CON’T)
(leaning in close to Marathon Man)
We’ve already met. You tried to scoop out my insides on Caprica, remember? Or didn’t you get that download yet?

MARATHON MAN
I don’t know what you’re talking about. I am a Tauron. A tylium miner. Our ship was taken. We’ve been here ever since. This is a medical research ship.

COLONIAL MARINE
(calling back to Starbuck)
You better take a look at this sir.

The Marine is standing in front of a cell. There appears to be a dead body inside.

MARATHON MAN
The Cylons use us. Like rats. They’ve been experimenting on us for years…

Starbuck moves slowly away from the Marathon Man down the long hallway, looking around in horror. The rest of the cells are littered with bodies.